Research

I am an anthropological archaeologist interested in how people make technological decisions. Using
a transdisciplinary and experimental approach in the study of prehistoric
ceramics I explore how past people perceived and utilized their landscape, how
they related with others in their communities as they learned the ‘proper’ ways
to make and use pots, and how they built a sense of self – an identity – as
valuable members of their local and broader communities.

My fieldworkhas combined archaeological
excavations, raw materials surveys, and experimental projects in Hungary and
Italy to examine technological traditions through time and space.

My laboratorywork integrates a wide range
of analytical techniques from geology, materials science and nuclear chemistry,
such as petrographic analysis, X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Instrumental Neutron
Activation Analysis (INAA), and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), to examine
in detail individual decisions made throughout the complete ceramic operational
sequence, from the selection of raw materials, to the forming, finishing,
firing, and use of pots. I am also embarking on a collaborative project that aims to test and refine ceramic rehydroxylation dating.

ARCHAEOLOGY

TECHNOLOGICAL DECISION-MAKING AND IDENTITY FORMATION

My
analysis of two Bronze Age villages (2700-1650 BC) inSW Hungary, Kiszombor-Új-Élet and Klárafalva-Hajdova, showed that social factors, related to the symbolic properties
of raw materials, to deeply engrained ideas about how a ‘proper’ pot should be
made, and to the social networks of apprenticeship in which individual potters
belong, play a central role in ceramic technological decision-making. (Michelaki et al., 2002; Michelaki, 2006). Understanding
that pots are not the result of compromises among environmental, functional and
mechanical constraints, but are instead tied intimately to historically
specific social choices was a new idea, challenging the consensus view that technology was bereft of sociality.
Moreover, it provided a roadmap for how to reconstruct the interplay between
technology and social life in the archaeological record. In my Cambridge Archaeological Journal paper (Michelaki,
2008) I went further to argue that technological processes are not passive
recipients of social information, but rather active creators of social
networks. It is the process of bringing pots into being in a particular way, in
a particular social, spatial, and historical context that makes you who you are,
that molds your identity.

Ceramics
are not the objectified and immutable memory of aesthetic and technical
standards of a community. They actively engage people in social acts that teach
them how to be members of their communities and become themselves. They engage
them in acts of learning to make ‘proper’ pots, of using pots ‘appropriately’ to
cook, of offering the ‘right’ pots to their dead, etc. Thus, it is critical to
understand how long-term traditions that transcend generations affect this
dynamic human-material interaction.

LONG-TERM TECHNOLOGICAL TRADITIONS

With
support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada in
2007, I initiated an innovative project that explores precisely the role of
long-term tradition in the development of technological systems. As part of a
multinational and transdisciplinary project that explores the history of human
habitation in the region of Bova Marina, in Calabria, SW Italy, my work focuses
on the ceramics from five archaeological sites, dating from the Neolithic (6th
mill. BC) to the Classical Greek period (4th cent. BC). Given that
the sites lie less that 1km apart from each other, their inhabitants must have
had access to the same types of resources. This makes the region of Bova Marina
an ideal setting for testing ideas about the social nature of technology.

My
project combines a systematic raw materials survey with experimental projects
in the field and in the laboratory to explore the distribution of resources on
the Calabrian landscape and the mineralogical and physico-chemical properties
of available raw materials. Against this systematic and deep understanding of
the local materials I study the mineralogy, chemistry and physical structure of
the archaeological ceramics, combining petrography, XRD, INAA and SEM. With
these data I reconstruct the complete ceramic production sequence within each
site and time period and assess the extent to which recipes, manufacturing
techniques, etc., persisted or changed across time. The analysis of the
geological clays has been published in the Journal
of Archaeological Science (Michelaki et al., 2012) and our interpretation of the long-term interplay between the Bova Marina landscape and the local Neolithic potters has appeard in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory (Michelaki et al., 2015). We are currently
preparing the Neolithic material for publication (Robb and Michelaki, 2012;
Michelaki et al., in prep.; Michelaki and Robb, in prep.). Analyses of the
Bronze Age and Classical material continue and will be completed within the
next two years. Independent archaeological data suggest that, during the Late
Neolithic, the Early and Late Bronze Ages, and the Greek period, southern
Italian communities were re-organized significantly. The types, sizes and
distributions of their settlements changed. So did their burial customs, their
material culture and their connections with the broader Mediterranean world. Our
goal is to test whether ceramic technologies persisted despite social
re-organizations. Doing so will allow us to evaluate whether long-term
traditions were deeply engrained and powerful factors guiding technological
decision-making.

CO-EXISTENCE OF DIFFERENT CERAMIC TRADITIONS

The
co-existence of different ceramic technological traditions in the same
community and what it implies about the social relations of the people who were
practicing them has fascinated me for a long time (Were they different people: colonizers,
captives, immigrants vs indigenous villagers? Were they the same people
producing for different audiences or social settings?). Nowhere could such
questions be better explored than in the context of the Neutral Iroquoian
communities of the 16th to 17th century, when shell-tempered
ceramics make their appearance within the typical Iroquoian grit-tempered
ceramic assemblages. Upon the completion of my work in Calabria, I see a great
opportunity to apply my theoretical and methodological approach in the
examination of Iroquoian ceramic technology. While I learn about Iroquoian
communities, I have already supervised an MA thesis on ceramic production in
Iroquoian villages, organized a session focused on current Iroquoian ceramic
research at the Canadian Archaeological Association meetings (2008), published
a paper on Iroquoian ceramics in the Canadian
Journal of Archaeology (Michelaki, 2007) and provided a number of
independent reading courses to graduate students at McMaster University and ASU.

ARCHAEOMETRY

REASSESSING PUBLISHED DATA AND PUBLISHING DATA COLLECTED LONG AGO

As I often rely heavily on compositional data to explore questions of
provenance and technology - and by extension, trade/exchange, social networks,
and identity – I struggle to comprehend and acknowledge the factors that can affect the
interpretation of such data. In an attempt to initiate a dialogue with the archaeological community on how to format, analyze, and
interpret archaeometric data I have recently engaged in a series of
re-assessments of published archaeometric data:

I have also been working closely with R.G.V. Hancock and a large number of other Canadian colleagues to publish instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) data from European copper samples found in various archaeological sites in Nova Scotia, Québec, and Ontario. Our goal is to understand how ‘Basque’ kettles and their fragments had been traded/exchanged among Indigenous communities in the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries in what is today Canada. All the data we use had been collected by R.G.V. Hancock and L. Pavlish over decades, while they headed the archaeometric facilities at the Slowpoke Reactor Facility of the University of Toronto.

The UK Team that did the original foundational work and is now also involved in a collaborative RHX validation study, funded by the NERC, includes Moira Wilson and Margaret Carter (Manchester University), Andrea Hamilton and Chris Hall (Edinburgh University), and Cathy Batt (Bradford University). Drs. Wilson, Carter, and Hamilton were the key scholars connecting our collaborative experiments with the existing UK Team. (for more detail on this project, see CURRENT PROJECTS above).